Morley's Hotel

{{Short description|Former hotel in London}}

File:View of Morley's Hotel Trafalgar Square London 1908 (cropped).jpg

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File:Trafalgar Square (21977452804).jpg)]]

Morley's Hotel was a building which occupied the entire eastern side of London's Trafalgar Square, until it was demolished in 1936 and replaced with South Africa House.{{cite web|title=The east side of Trafalgar Square|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol20/pt3/pp56-57|website=BHO|accessdate=22 November 2015}} It was next to St Martin-in-the-Fields Church.

It was designed by the architect George Ledwell Taylor, and originally developed as apartments.{{cite book |last1=Mace |first1=Rodney |title=Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire |year=1975 |publisher= Lawrence & Wishart|location=London |isbn=0-85315-367-1 |pages=42–3}} It was built by Atkinson Morley in 1831, who in 1822 owned the British Hotel (also known as the British Coffee House) at 27 Cockspur Street,{{Cite web |date=1935 |title=Survey of London: Volume 16, St Martin-in-The-Fields I: Charing Cross. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1935. G H Gater, E P Wheeler, Editors |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol16/pt1/pp146-149 |access-date=30 October 2024 |website=British History Online |quote="No. 27, Cockspur Street, was the British Coffee House."}} but had sold it to buy the Burlington Hotel at 19–20 Cork Street.{{cite book|author1=Terry Gould|author2=David Uttley|title=A History of the Atkinson Morley's Hospital 1869–1995|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yUYb2CtCQ_0C&pg=PA11|accessdate=22 November 2015|date=1 December 2000|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-0-567-63304-0|pages=10–11}}

Morley's Hotel opened in 1832.{{cite web|title=LONDON: Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square...and MORLEY'S HOTEL|url=http://tatteredandlostephemera.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/london-charing-cross-and-trafalgar.html|website=tatteredandlostephemera|date=14 June 2013 |accessdate=22 November 2015}} In 1850, in his Hand-Book of London, Peter Cunningham described it as "well-frequented, and is good of its kind".{{cite web|title=Victorian London – Houses and Housing – Hotels – list of hotels|url=http://www.victorianlondon.org/houses/hotels.htm|website=victorianlondon|accessdate=22 November 2015}} Author Henry James recalled the fire in the coffee room and the vast four-poster beds.{{Citation |last=McWilliam |first=Rohan |title=Grand Hotel |date=2020-09-24 |work=London's West End |pages=264–278 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/31958/chapter/267691790 |access-date=2024-10-08 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/oso/9780198823414.003.0015 |isbn=978-0-19-882341-4}}

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed there for some time in 1900, while he was writing The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the fictional Northumberland Hotel of that book may well have been based on Morley's. He wrote to his mother in 1900 that he was "somewhat sick" of Morley's and intended to try the Golden Cross Hotel.{{cite book|author=Alistair Duncan|title=An Entirely New Country: Arthur Conan Doyle, Undershaw and the Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=69C7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA102|accessdate=22 November 2015|date=16 December 2011|publisher=Andrews UK Limited|isbn=978-1-908218-21-6|pages=102–103}}

Other visitors to Morley's included Buffalo Bill Cody.